Gene Hackman Quotes

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

My preference is for good writing. It doesn't matter if it's for film or TV. Whatever. It starts with the writing. Even though I've had problems with writers, it doesn't matter how great of an actor you are. If the writing is bad, you're going to struggle.

A good script can come from anywhere.

The elegance of a really good screenplay, I admire it. I can't do it.

I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.

The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.

I get a script and it's really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It's paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is.

It was really fun to start writing movies because you could actually take characters whose voice you enjoy writing in and have actual things happen to them for more than five minutes. It was really fun to thread it together.

My approach to making movies is different than other people, because I just write a lot of screenplays. I'm constantly writing screenplays.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

A good script makes our job a lot easier.

When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

Writing a great script - not just a good one, but a great one - is almost an impossible task.

When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.

If you get a script and it's really well written, that's always exciting.

There are a lot of good stories out there, but I haven't found too many great scripts.

The hardest single thing you do is get the bloody screenplay right.

So with 'There Will Be Blood,' I didn't even really feel like I was adapting a book. I was just desperate to find stuff to write.

I am lucky enough to have Aaron Sorkin write what I have to say.

Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

I wouldn't know a good script if it bit me in the face.

If you want to be a screenwriter, take an acting class to get a sense of what you're asking actors to do. Learning other skills will help you communicate with people and respect what they do.

I've never written anything that I haven't wanted to write again. I want to, and still am, writing 'A Few Good Men' again. I didn't know what I was doing then, and I'm still trying to get it right. I would write 'The Social Network' again if they would let me, I'd write 'Moneyball' again. I would write 'The West Wing' again.